e big beasts
turn have become ambassadors
for the firm’s meat, creating new
customers among their friends and
neighbours.
Speaking to FFD at Speciality
& Fine Food Fair Ireland, Edward
Horgan of wholesaler Horgans
Delicatessen Supplies said Pat
Whelan had “changed the face
of butchery retailing” in Ireland,
and in recent years the business
has achieved a step-change after
forging a relationship with stylish
food, clothing and lifestyle chain
Avoca. The first James Whelan
in-store butchery opened in Avoca
Monkstown in 2011, and the idea is
gradually being rolled out to other
sites.
“We felt their ethos was a
particularly good fit for us,” explains
Pat Whelan, who describes Avoca
as “a magical, magical business”.
“They’re very good at creating an
atmosphere without it feeling in any
way considered. It’s like a stage set.”
Whelan is eloquent, in the Irish
way, about his business and about
food in general. He has even coauthored The Irish Beef Book, with
food writer Katy McGuiness, with
thoughts and recipes encouraging
people to use every part of the
animal, from nose to tail. Anything
less is “disrespectful” to the animal,
he tells me, revealing that James
Whelan Butchers is in the early
stages of developing another oldfashioned product that is starting to
make waves again: beef broth.
“Ireland has world-class beef,”
he says, “and I need to make the
most of it out of respect for my
trade, for my craft and for nature,
which has given us this wonderful
animal. To discard any piece of it is
a sin.”
He is certainly doing his bit
for nose-to-tail consumption with
this year’s Great Taste champion.
Since the award created a surge of
interest, messages have apparently
been flying around the company to
make sure not a scrap of trimmed
fat is being discarded.
But Whelan doesn’t think he’ll
need to start buying in beef fat to
satisfy demand. “There’s a lot of
tonnage of meat going through
this business,” he says, “so I
think it’s possible for us to build
a considerable customer base for
dripping.
“And the wonderful thing
for James Whelan Butchers is
that we’ve taken something that
was so undervalued and we have
premiumised it.”
www.jameswhelanbutchers.com
Pat Whelan: ‘The wonderful thing is that we’ve taken something that was undervalued and we have premiumised it’
Vol.16 Issue 9 · October 2015
13